Automan
by Consuelo Higdon
Summary: /Chaptered/ Sari has a regular family; a truck for a dad, twin alien airplanes for brothers, a spider for a mom, a giant green robot for a big brother... wait... what? AU TFA
1. Automan

"I GOT IT!"

Prowl's attention was briefly directed towards the orange mech running after a small toy. Upon closer observation it was a toy airplane; two of them actually. Prowl caught one that came his way.

"Do you mind?"

"Sorry uncle Prowl!" Jazz took a glance behind him and saw his twin nephews staring right through him. Hearing a small buzzing sound, he looked up and saw another toy airplane. The twins bolted straight for it and ran straight for them. He turned back to Prowl, who was deciding his move, and they both ducked down. The twins missed them by hics.

Prowl stole another of Jazz's knights.

"I got it I got it I got it!" Jetfire barked, and finally managed to jump up and reach it. Jetstorm did the same, but he narrowly missed it and fell on the couch. In a flash of instinct, Jetfire turned on his boosters and finally grabbed it. He went back down and smiled. It fell a bit when he realized he wasn't supposed to do that.

"No fair! You aren't to be making fire in game!" Jetstorm chastised with a smile. He playfully nudged his twin over, before their younger brothers came in.

"He's right you know; you lose points for that." Bumblebee, the youngest, was smiling from behind the couch. Bulkhead walked up to Jetfire.

"Sorry, Jetfire. You're going to have to try again." Bulkhead said. It was hard to read his emotion at this angle, but he gave him a lighthearted smile all the same. It was just a game, but he was ashamed of himself for cheating either way. He gave the toy airplane back to Bulkhead, and walked over to his twin.

"Please to be forgiving me, brother." Jetfire asked solemnly. Jetstorm patted his brother's head approvingly; giving half-smile-half-giggle, assuring that he did not need to apologize.

"Is okay. I would be doing same anyway." Jetstorm said.

"Hey! You mind being QUIET!? Some of us are trying to be PRODUCTIVE here!" they all turned to Ratchet, their 'Grumpa.' He was messing around with a rod-like machine with Arcee, their Grandma. It was a weird rod-type device, supposedly a data-upload device. Ratchet had been working on it for quite some time now, apparently planning to use it so that they could give their individual holograms more of a sense of actually being there—not to mention each having their own records of their human existence, just to make life a little bit easier for her.

Sari was eating some random cereal and watching something on television. She had her old pink bunny right next to her, and she had designed a special outfit for herself. It looked very strange, but she liked it nonetheless. Her bunny had a very uncreative name; she just named it "bunny". But Bunny was good enough for it. It was a toy, so it agreed with anything, her mom said. If only she knew.

"_You should tell mom about me soon, Sari. It's only a matter of time before this… growing life-shard thingy inside me becomes readable._" Bunny was no fool, she'd give him that. But she just couldn't just walk up to her mom and say 'Bunny's been talking to me for a very long time now and He says hi" because her mom might get worried that she's going insane or something.

Bunny understood though, and pointed out her brother's were back. They were coming up from the basement with little energon cubes. Dad explained that energon was what Cybertronians both ate and used as an energy source. There was A LOT of energon down there, seeing as Arcee and Optimus spent a lot of time converting all of the possible energy resources for the cubes. While down there, they grabbed some small cubes to nibble on until later.

While Sari ate her own cereal (not energon-cereal, just regular cereal) and her brother next to her nudged her back. She looked up at her brother, the youngest boy of the family, but not the youngest. That spot was reserved for Sari, though Bumblebee was only about half of a human year older than she was. He was kinda slouching with his arm over the back of the couch.

"Hey, don't you have school today?" OH CRUD! What time was it!? Where was her bag!? Oh dear oh dear oh dear! DAD!

Bouncing out of her seat and almost spilling her cereal, she ran to her room with Bunny and grabbed her backpack. Almost panicking she tried to think a bit rationally. Her calendar said that it was September 12th, and that today was an all-day field trip starting at 9:00. Which was…? IN HALF AN HOUR OH CRUD OH CUD.

"C'mon, dad! I'm going to be late for the school field trip!" Sari ran to her Parents' room and banged on the door over and over. Optimus opened the door and yawned. Apparently he just got up. Squinting his eyes open, he cleared his processor and tried to remember what day it was.

"I'm coming Sari! … just give me some time to wake up." He reassured with a yawn. Dragging himself into the Living Area and stretching, he transformed into his Truck mode and opened his Passenger door. Climbing inside, Sari said goodbye to the rest of her family and hopped in. Activating his holographic driver, Optimus drove away to Sari's Elementary School.

Then something happened. Jetfire didn't know what, but he got this odd feeling that something bad was about to happen. He looked at his brother, shooting him a look that hopefully said "I have a bad feeling about this." Knowing that he was thinking the same thing, Jetstorm nodded and continued eating his energon cube. Wordlessly, they agreed to circle around the area of the field trip to make sure Sari would be safe. But for now, they would just have to watch the rest of this nature documentary Prowl was on.

* * *

On the Roof, Jetfire and Jetstorm looked over the city. Jetfire still wasn't so sure if they should be acting like this, but he knew Jetstorm wouldn't want to pass off an opportunity to keep their family safe. Their family was the only thing Sari really had, the only thing anyone in the family had. Taking in a breath, he tried to swallow the bad feeling that he was disobeying someone. He and his brother were both obedient mechs, and didn't complain when they had to do something they didn't want to. At least, not outwardly.

"Ready for Lift off, brother?" Jetfire heard his twin ask. Taking in a deep breath, he put on a determined face with a half-smile to lighten it up, and responded with utmost confidence.

"Being ready when you are!"

"Ahem!" turning around, they saw someone they were used to seeing by now. She was purple. She was Techno-Organic. She was their mother.

"Mother! What is you doing on roof?" Jetstorm asked, surprised. She was a sneaky femme, yes, but he didn't want to get into any kind of trouble. And he hoped that she wasn't here to 'ground' them. Brothers Bumblebee and Bulkhead had made up that game they were playing earlier to get them used to not having their jets. Or being able to transform. Mother was good at disabling things like that.

"I should be asking you two." BlackArachnia chastised. Jetstorm and Jetfire looked at each other, worry on their faces. They were worried about themselves as much as they were worried about Sari. Something told them that the bad thing was going to happen very soon…

So they told the truth and got going.

* * *

So this is what Sumdac Systems was like. Outside, everyone in her class was 'getting their wiggles out' by playing an old game of Red Rover. She was holding on to Daniel's and Ishmael's hands. Ishmael was tall for her age, and she was Iranian according to her. Daniel was… Daniel. He asked a whole lot of questions and sometimes they were annoying, but everyone had the same questions he did and he just had the guts to ask them.

Sari wasn't paying much attention to the game, though. She was busy looking at all of the weird people in suits and all of the new robots coming out of an assembly line. It was kinda familiar, somehow, but then she remembered who her family was. She was around giant transforming robots—these were not much different.

"Red Rover, Red Rover, send Sari right over!" Oops! My turn!

She ran happily to the other end and managed to take some advice from Bulkhead to get through. Her team cheered and so did the other ones, being good sports. She grabbed Gabriel's wrist and they both ran back to the other line. Holding hands again, they were about to call Mitch over, when their teacher came in. Looking at the teacher, they knew it was time to go inside the factory for the field trip.

When they all got inside, Professor Sumdac was there to give them a happy welcome. He looked familiar to Sari. Somehow…

Up in the sky, Jetfire and Jetstorm were circling cautiously. In order not to attract too much attention to them, they flew randomly in creative lines, often making pictures with some false exhaust like they saw on television sometimes. Sometimes they flew back and forth in zig-zags, dancing and making patterns at the same time.

How this wasn't going to attract attention was a bit fuzzy.

While going outside for the field trip, heading towards the Assembly lines after having a short tour through the Hall of Bots, all of the kids heard a bit of whirring and looked up. There they saw some beautiful alien patterns and images, following two planes. Mesmerized by the spectacle, Sari smiled knowingly. Even when they were trying to be stealthy the twins could be such show-offs.

Directing their vis-scanners down to the plant, they noticed Sari's class watching them. Oops. Maybe they should have just flown in a straight line for a while and just come back randomly. Jetfire thought that might take some attention away. But then again, there wasn't much fun in that. Besides, if they got too far away maybe they wouldn't be able to get to the plant in time. Jetstorm felt the same, and they both knew to make some boring-looking circles for now.

"_They're not supposed to be known."_ Well, yeah. I guess I'd better get the tour going again. Oh, by the way, learn some better grammar please, Bunny. _"There ain't nothing wrong with my grammar!"_ Case in point.

Sari nudged on Professor Sumdac's coat, grabbing his attention. She had big eyes and red hair, blue and red berets holding her hair out of her face. She had pigtails too, and a strange outfit that somehow seemed familiar. Inside her back-pack was a stuffed pink-and-yellow bunny rabbit. She reminded him of something he saw a long time ago…

That wasn't important. He walked up to the class teacher and told him that it was time to continue their tour. Nodding, he got the kid's attention again and led them into the Plant with Professor Sumdac continuing his monologue about Detroit and its robots. They were walking inside, seeing how the Police Drones were being made. It was very interesting, seeing how the "spark-less" robots were made.

"Professor Sumdac? Where'd you get the idea for all of these robots?" Mitch asked. Sari paid attention to the Professor a bit more, awaiting an answer. Where did he get the idea for all of these robots? It couldn't be her family. Her family was a secret.

"_Tell me something I don't know."_ Shut up Bunny.

"It was something I just… stumbled upon." Professor Sumdac said with a smile. Then they continued their tour over to Nanobots. Looking through the protective window, Sari and some other kids saw a lot of dead animals being tested on. Professor Sumdac assured them that the animals died of completely natural causes. There was one red-black-and-white Elder Kopi, a fairly recent discovery. It was the predecessor of the Koi Fish, and had only been around for about 50 years, but it aged exactly like a human. And, hence, perfect for lab experiments.

"_I don't think an Elder Kopi is supposed to grow so fast…"_ Really? Oh crud. That is a BIG kopi…. IS IT GROWING!?

The Elder Kopi grew and grew. Some of the things it touched were sucked inside of it, and kept growing. It was disgusting and moving, somehow managing to eat everything. It grew legs after merging with a cockroach, and left a bunch of weird white goop behind.

"I can't control the Nanobots!"

"They're merging with everything!" Two of the workers down there screamed out. They ran for the corner, trying to avoid the new monster.

"No need to panic, children! These happy accidents are often what lead to… discovery!"

"Uh, Mister Sumdac, this accident doesn't look too happy…!" Mitch had barely finished saying that when the Elder Kopi crashed through the protective glass. It headed straight for them, and there was no time to think. Running for their lives, they ignored everyone else and bolted out of the building as soon as they could, the Nano monster right behind them. It kept getting bigger until it couldn't fit.

A loud crash was heard, and Sirens began to blare. Staring downward, Jetfire and Jetstorm saw the weird fish monster. It was horrendously ugly, and really, really, REALLY big! Colorful dots ran frantically away, while new sirens began to sound from another direction. Scanning the area, they noticed the authorities racing to the scene.

"I is not thinking that fish is part of fielding trip!" Jetfire mused to his brother. After seeing a strange tentacle grab an oddly-colored dot, it only took one small voice, barely audible over all of the other screams and sirens, to get them off the deep end.

Sari.

Screaming her head out, she dropped her backpack and it landed on the ground without a sound. The tentacle kept squeezing her, and she desperately tried to pull herself free. It was getting harder to breathe, but she managed to yell out two names. She didn't care who heard.

"JETFIRE! JETSTORM!"

Captain Fanzone had just made it to the scene when he heard the small girl screaming nonsense. Getting out of his car fast as possible, He grabbed a malfunctioning bullhorn and tested it. Asking for a working one, he got his from a SWAT team member and began to bark out his orders.

"Alright, Emergency crew, get all the civilians evacuated NOW! SWAT team, get. That. Girl!" Captain Fanzone yelled. The Police ran straight for the monster into a stare down, before firing. The ammunition barely made a scratch in its odd half-organic metal. The Nanomonster pushed the police members away and grabbed the police cars behind them. It sucked the cars inside of it, and kept squeezing the noise girl. It was almost completely quiet.

Then it got hit by two giant robots that fell from the sky. The monster lost its grip on Sari and dropped her. Gasping for breath, the world span and deflated around her, the blood rushing to her head. She landed on something kinda hard, but got her bearings pretty quick. She looked up to see one of the most familiar faces she knew.

"JETSTORM!" She chirped happily, while Jetfire came into view not too far away. Creating a fireball in his hand, the flaming ball of nothing hit the monster flat in the eyes, and starting burning it away a bit and melting. Behind him, the SWAT team had really big guns on their shoulders, aiming straight at him and his brother.

"FIRE!" Jetstorm and Jetfire ran in opposite directions. Jetstorm looked back at the scene to see the monster implode. The ammunition seemed to go straight into the monster by mistake, and was set off on the inside. Jetfire took this chance to ask for backup. If this was a monster made by what he thought it was made of, there was no chance they'd get rid of it on their own.

This was a bit too much for Captain Fanzone. When those two giant robots came out of their little hiding place, they put down the girl they'd kidnapped while they got covered with strange white goop. It smelled horrible to everyone. Captain Fanzone frowned at the mess around him, while giving a disapproving glare up at the two robots, analyzing them. They were the almost-exact spitting image of each other; somewhere between fraternal and identical.

A bit worried, Sari ran up to Captain Fanzone and gave him a sad look. Looking down at the girl that pulled on his shirt, he lowered himself down to her level and smiled a bit, putting his hand on her shoulder. He noticed that her arms mirrored the color schemes of the two mechs above her. That definitely wasn't coincidence.

"What's wrong, miss?" He asked solemnly. Smiling a sincere smile, he let her know that he wasn't going to hurt her. She still had her sad face on, refusing to be consoled. She spoke up a bit, turning her head straight at him.

"You're not going to take my brothers away are you?" Captain Fanzone was a bit confused by this, and let it show for her. "I mean the robots. You won't take them away?" A bit clearer, he put a hand up to his chin quizzically. Standing up, he thought for a bit, and had an answer ready for her. Looking up to the robots position, he was about to address the three of them with an answer. But that's the operative word: About.

Hearing new Sirens blare, more robots showed up. No one noticed, because the giant monster was rebuilding itself! The organic Goop flew straight back into one mass, back into the Nanomonster. Everything it was touching, if it wasn't organic, was sucked right back into the monster. And it was dragging the Jet Twins right into it.

"MOTHER! FATHER! BROTHERS! **HELP!!!!**" They both screeched. The newer robots made themselves known to the rest of Detroit by running straight for them, hanging on for the oldest boys' sake. Jetstorm was holding on to Jetfire's legs, Jetfire was holding on to Bumblebee, then Prowl, Jazz, BlackArachnia, Optimus and finally Bulkhead. Sari held on to Bulkhead's legs, trying her best to pull the twins out of the monster.

"Well don't just stand there! Help us!" She called out. In reply, all of the kids came running up to Sari and tugged as hard as they could. Even the police forces joined in and pulled as hard as it could. Slowly, and somewhat painfully, the Twins were being pulled out of the monster. They were almost completely out when the Nanobots inside sent out a shockwave to numb everyone. Losing their grip, they were rebounded off and the twins were sucked right into the monster like spaghetti noodles.

"NO!!" BlackArachnia screeched. Full of rage, she started running right for it, only to be stopped midway by Optimus. Turning back, rage in her eyes, she saw Optimus' faceplate doing its best to stay calm for her. It looked sad and angry at the same time, making the expression a tasteless face difficult to read. She frowned and looked down, not a word needed to be said. She knew she couldn't go in.

"Ugh, we can't just stand here with our pistons in our servos! We have to get our boys out of there, Optimus!" She insisted, waving her hand and pointing towards the monster.

"Alright, go head. If you want to get eaten my Nanobots!" Ratchet barked, making him known. Arcee was next to him, her scanning-visor making note of the sheer multitude of Nanobots. Taking in the information, she relayed it to the rest of the bots.

"This monster's chock full of self-replicating Nanobots! It's creating more of itself from the metal it eats. If we don't get our boys out of there, they'll be eaten alive!" Arcee mentioned, pain and fear in her eyes. Bulkhead tensed, and deployed his Wrecking Ball, spinning it around in the air and tackling the creature.

"THEN LET'S GET THEM OUTTA THERE ALREADY!" He slammed his Wrecking Ball hard as he could at the monster, almost making it clean through. Least, until he heard a cry of pain through his new whole. Jetfire apparently got hit in the head with the Wrecking Ball, Arcee said. Bulkhead yanked his Wrecking Ball hand back fast as he could, but the Nanobots clamped around it, and sucked him in.

"Bulkhead!" Bumblebee Pushed against his buddy in the opposite direction, his wheels speeding off at globally illegal speeds. Prowl, noticing that this wasn't going to help at all, Warned Bumblebee out of the way. And then he sliced off the Wrecking Ball from its tether. Bulkhead rebounded, and fell flat on his back.

"That was whack, Prowl! What's got your processor in a funk? You just amputated our _nephew_!" Jazz chastised. Prowl simply stood up and deployed his battle mask. Noting how Bulkhead would have shared the same fate as the twins, Bumblebee only heard the beginnings of a fight before being pulled away by Ratchet and Arcee.

"Got a minute, Kid?" Ratchet whispered. Bumblebee soon found himself inside a parking lot with his grandparents and younger sister, doing a "huddle up." Sari looked back outside and saw all of the police and her family pull the monster apart again and again. Looking back at her family, she prepared herself for the worse.

"We've got to get my brothers outta there!" Sari begged.

"I know! And here's how we're going to do it." Ratchet pulled out his Data-Upload device, and displayed it in front of Arcee's scanning-visor. She displayed a bit of what she had already learned of the monster in an empty spot in the parking lot.

"The monster's full of Nanobots that respond to certain coding. They think in Binary code, so everything they scan is given a code and modified into more Nanobots." She began to explain. The image was enlarged to have a clearer view of the Nanobot design, and showed a bit of the binary code. "We have to throw in a data-code that will override its replication factor in order to destabilize it and destroy it."

"And then we can get our bro's out of there!" Bumblebee cheered. Sari smiled up and jumped a bit, excited at getting to see her brothers again.

"Then let's get that thing in there!"

"Hold up! We may have the code, but we someone fast enough to get in there and deliver the code without spending too much time in there!" Ratchet informed. It was obvious who had to do it, even though Bumblebee tried to be oblivious. Didn't work.

"_I hope he does it right, for the twins' sake!"_ Wha!! Don't scare me like that Bunny!_ "Sorry."_ You better be!

Sari went back to watching the battle outside. Jazz was fending off some of the random ammunition coming out of the monster's stomach somehow, Prowl and Optimus were slicing off some of the tentacles before they could grab them, and Bulkhead was staying out of it and talking to Captain Fanzone. Sari even smiled when she saw her mother warning everyone to get out of the way of Bumblebee.

She saw Bumblebee smoosh into the monster with the weird rod thing. She held her breath. She hopes he'd be alright. She started to think about him. How he had always absent mindedly click the television remote and would put together the words he heard into a random sentence to make her laugh. How he always took her to the Pier to watch Fireworks on the Fourth of July. How they would always talk about random things like Serenity Orbit, the newest pop singer. How she'd jump on the bed while Bumblebee shouted the lyrics to admittedly bad music.

The Kopi started to glow. Then it blew up. Everything started to splash onto random things, sticking to everything so gross-like. It still stank.

"INCOMING!" Sari heard her dad yell out. Staring upwards, she saw her three brothers and Bulkhead's Wrecking Ball fall straight from the sky. Bulkhead caught the Twins and BlackArachnia caught Bumblebee. Sari was relieved for her older brother. He was perfectly fine, he insisted.

"They're not…" Bulkhead almost whispered. Everyone turned over to Bulkhead and saw the damage done to the twins. They were beat up badly, wholes everywhere in their armor and their sparks exposed and electrocuting. They weren't moving or talking at all. Arcee gasped, and started clinging to Ratchet. Sari just kept staring.

Sari found herself speeding off with the Police to the side of her somewhat large family. She remembered the day of her third birthday. Everyone was missing, no matter where she looked. It was terrible, the place was deserted and she thought she might cry. Running into the Main room, she found everyone all happy happy joy joy celebrating her birthday. That night, she talked with her mom about how she was really scared. It felt so empty inside too…

She also started thinking about the twins.

Jetstorm was always like the oldest brother, even though that was impossible down to the very last cesium atom. Jetfire didn't mind though, and they both decided to take her up to the sky one night.

It was amazing, flying. She saw everything go past her, went inside clouds, and made beautiful patterns in the sky. It was like a dream. But it was no match to what she saw later. Going as high as they could without running out of air for Sari to breathe, they made it all the way into the last stretch of air before the upper atmosphere.

It was the most beautiful thing she ever saw in her entire life.

Above her was an endless diamond sky, so many stars that she just couldn't count them. There were even some clusters that looked like clouds. Jetfire and Jetstorm were right behind her, holding her close. They felt so warm. She knew she'd be safe with them around.

She kept looking up. So many beautiful colors, so many wonderful patterns… it was unbelievably beautiful. The biggest nebulae she saw was a purple expanse of the Milky Way. Jetstorm and Jetfire said nothing, taking in the sky as much as she was.

Then she looked up at them, and they almost blended in with the scenery in this light. They looked regal and serene, almost as if they owned this expanse of the sky.

Perhaps they did.

But she would never know, because they were going to die. The sound of fading heartbeats snapped her back to reality. She had found herself in the middle of their deathbeds. She didn't remember anything that happened before this. She just remembered her brothers.

…beep…

She loved her entire family. If I could, I would recount every wonderful memory she had of her family.

But Bunny would not allow it.

…..beep…..

Sari remembered her pact with Bunny. She would always kiss him on the lips and make him kiss her family before bed, or even after. He insisted that someday she would appreciate this habit. She picked him up and out of her backpack, kissing him on the lips.

……….beep……….

She usually said goodnight.

………………..beep………………..

"Goodbye Jetstorm." Press.

……………………………….beep……………………………

"Goodbye Jetfire." Press.

………………………………………………………beep……………………………………………….

Their bodies turned gray.

…………………………………………………………………………….......................................................................

They were gone.

………………………………….

………………………………….

………………………………….

…………………………….beep………………………….

* * *

Captain Fanzone smiled at the Celebration that ensued after those robots woke up from the dead. How that happened, nobody cared. What did matter now was that the "oldest boys" were alive. Captain Fanzone closed his small gap that let him see everything, and walked back outside to the crew he came with.

"Come on boys, our work here is done." Captain Fanzone said, getting in his car and going home for the night. He started to snigger at the first thing the orange robot said after they woke up, his voice shaky from the current events.

"WhY mY ShOuLdErS hUrT?"

* * *

**Authors Note: Please please PLEASE do not Story Alert this. This will not be continued as a Chapter Story.**


	2. Mother

The oxygen tanks read empty.

BlackArachnia stepped out of the cargo ship she was on. This red dwarf planet was good enough to stay in for a bit, at least until the ship's oxygen tanks were refilled. Being techno-organic sucked; you needed to breathe and you'd hurt if you moved the wrong limb the wrong way. And she had to wear a helmet to conceal the more gruesome of her transformation. She didn't like herself at all.

But she had to. Optimus had promised her that he'd love her, no matter what she looked like. Even went as far to let her cry on his shoulders. Cybertronians didn't cry. They leaked coolant when their bodies overheated, and sometimes coolant would leak out of the head and roll down their faces. But it wasn't the same as crying, not at all.

Of course their little moment had been rudely interrupted when a young, yellow mech popped out of the inner control bank underneath the screen. He had been fixing the gravity control, which had explained the randomly feeling lighter and heavier during the whole ordeal (which had made her feel nauseous and unwell). After a bit of staring, he had hidden himself back inside, refusing to get out, but promising that he wouldn't mess with the controls. He said that he 'didn't want the ship to start flying upside-down on him'.

Of course it was a bit difficult to convince the yellow mech to get out of the control panel. He refused to comply under most circumstances, wouldn't tell them his name, and the autopilot had been locked to 'just go straight and try not to hit anything' by the same non-compliant mech living inside the control panel. After several fruitless attempts to convince him to get out, he had slipped out a small nugget of information that had sparked BlackArachnia's abilities in the physical-psychological sciences, her profession back at the Autobot Academy.

BlackArachnia stopped herself. This train of thought led nowhere. No, it didn't lead to nowhere, it led to Sentinel Prime. She sighed, and tried not to think about him too much. That incident in Archa Seven, where she had gotten her organic form and where Sentinel had… She shook her head, trying not to cry. He was a little bit of a jerk, she would admit. But he was a lovable and persistent little dork too, he had good enough goals to justify the majority of his less-than-favorable actions. He was a good guy on the inside, and he had yet to corrupt those in any way.

Why'd he have to go and die?

"Stop it! Focus on something else! Look at the topography on this red planet or something, there's nothing to cry about! It's not like you're a raggedy patched-together mess of a femme after that day either! You're beautiful and you know it! At least Optimus thinks so! Yeah!

"Optimus…

"Ugh, you're really out of it today, aren't you self? Oh great, now I'm talking to myself. Ah who cares, it's not like anyone can hear me in this thin atmosphere." As if her words were an invitation, a random sound from her left reached her audios/ears/whatever they were now. Turning her whole body, nothing really caught her eye immediately. Just a weird mound towards the faraway sun of the Solar System (BlackArachnia knew that the Solar System was a planetary orbital system orbiting a rather odd, life-giving sun).

Mound? There weren't any mounds on uninhabited planets like this. The only time planetary features happened were if something moved it around, like energy from a sun or water vapor from the core or even another living creature. What could have made that mound over there? Wisely choosing to think about the mound, since it was the only remotely interesting thing on this random dwarf planet (something in the back of her head told her that the correct term for it was "Eris", dubbed by the organic inhabitants of another planet close by), she transformed into her organic mode and tapped lightly towards the mound.

For once she was grateful for the light-footed appendages of her organic mode. It was much quieter than her stabilizing servos, and made movement six times faster with the extra legs. Turning the mound carefully, and making sure nothing dangerous was around it. There was a strange hole-like indent into the rather large mound, something seemed to show through. Nothing really big, just something… what color was that? Orange? Red? There was another color next to it, maybe green.

Transforming back into 'robot' mode, she reached out and rubbed some of the dust off. The items inside were a bit more prominent, this time revealing that they were… arms? They were strange arms, though. They were blocky and in a position that could be described as an embrace. There were little 'wings' on the arms as well. From what she could deduce, there were bodies underneath this mound. And, judging by the vibrant, saturated colors on the arms, they were online.

Cautiously, she reached out one arm towards the cream-colored arm. It was very warm. Almost to the point of being hot. No. It was a… different kind of warm. The kind of warm BlackArachnia couldn't explain. And yet, something in the back of her mind told her that she would be feeling this exact kind of warm again very soon. It was nice, though. Very comforting.

Digging out some more of the bigger rocks and mounds first, she managed to reveal as much as she could of the two bodies hidden inside the mound. Soon enough she found the bodies of nearly identical mechs. They seemed pretty young, though she couldn't tell at this time. One thing was for sure, these two were most definitely 'children'. And twins. Don't forget the fact that they're twins.

BlackArachnia placed a finger to her chin. Twins didn't happen very often on Cybertron. As far as she could deduce, the most probable explanation was that they were split from one protoform. However, a second glance at these two mechs told her that these two most definitely did not transform into land vehicles. For one, there wasn't a tread to be found. That and the aeronautical-shapes of their helmets (the only thing besides their color schemes that differentiated them) told her these two were made for flight. Focusing a bit on the other aspects of their anatomy, they didn't have wings, and instead their legs seemed to have and opening, possibly to extend outward for a turbine. Ergo, these two most likely transformed into space vehicles.

How two Cybertronian space vehicles got to the planet Eris was a completely different question. But for now, that didn't matter. What she needed to know was what she should do with these twins. Their bodies were a bit damaged, she noticed. There was a very good chance that these guys may have been in a fight nearby and simply floated onwards in Stasis Lock until they reached this dwarf planet. Either way, these two were damaged children in the middle of the Milky Way Galaxy doing next to nothing. Unless she woke them up.

She opened her comm.-link frequency to the ship's computer, sending a written message instead of a verbal one, since she didn't want to wake these two up just yet. It was a quick message to Optimus (or maybe the small mech hiding inside the control systems would intercept it) telling either one of them that she had found two abandoned/stranded mechs out in the wastelands of Eris. That may have been a bit poetic, but there was something inside her new organic systems that wished for something more than logical sentience.

Once the rest of her message was over with and sent, she broke the frequency and stared at the mechs. What should she do with them now? Well, no other choice but to take them back to the ship. Reaching out carefully, thinking about how she would get them to the ship, she felt the faceplate of the blue mech. It was a bit cold, but she felt something radiate off of her hand into his head. He felt much more comfortable the longer she held his face, almost burying his head inside her hand. It wasn't really something BlackArachnia had experienced before, so it came off as a bit of a surprise.

The good kind.

Sliding her hand off of the blue mech's face, his face hung in the area where her hand had been. May as well get them out of the mound before-

"hrrnnn….." She darted her four eyes to the orange mech next to the blue mech. The whole 'they're twins' theory, if it had been debated, was now completely true. No other way would one mech be touched and the other mech respond. She stared at the orange mech, watching him open his eyes after who knows how long. He had apparently been asleep for a while, since they seemed a bit difficult to open.

When the orange mech had finally opened his eyes enough to see, he stared at BlackArachnia. It was an innocent, mindful stare. The kind of stare that meant they were thinking intently about something. BlackArachnia smiled, hoping to let him know she was friendly, and opened her mouth to say something.

"Are you… are you my mother?"

She let her mouth hang open. She made a strange sound, and closed her mouth again. Putting her hand to her chin, she thought for a bit, staring at the ground, trying to think of an answer. She had never been a mother. And frankly she didn't know if she wanted to be one. She shook her head and turned it back to the orange mech. He still had that look in his optics, which now BlackArachnia could only describe as spark-slagging _adorable._

"eh… let's get you out of there first, then we can talk about that stuff, okay son…?"

"So you are my mother?" Bad word choice. 'Son' was the only thing she could think of after the topic of family was brought up, and her habit of talking to herself had made her slip up with the wrong word. She hoped dearly that it wouldn't happen again.

"Let's just get you and your… brother out of there." BlackArachnia suggested, pointing to the blue mech. The orange mech stared at the sleeping blue mech, and fidgeted a bit, tightening his grip on him. Pulling himself out a bit, he grabbed his twin tightly towards him, making sure he wouldn't get buried by the makeshift roof on top of them. BlackArachnia helped him get out there, tugging at his back. He had some strange kibble on his back…

Pulling them both out after some time, the blue mech was either in deep stasis lock or simply did not want to be fully online yet. The orange mech clearly showed strain at keeping his twin upright, and BlackArachnia quietly reached out her own arms. The orange mech, knowing what she was suggesting, and no doubt trusting her presumed approval of being his mother, placed the blue mech into her partially-organic arms.

The blue mech instantly inched closer towards her body heat, a soft moan coming from his vocals. It felt… nice… holding the young mech in her arms. It seemed to have sparked something inside her organic half. Her processor had acknowledged this instinctual feeling to 'motherly love'. It seemed that every organic female had the natural instinct to care for the young, no matter who it was. She hoped this wouldn't become a hindrance for Optimus or the Little Yellow Mech that Lived in The Control Panel.

The orange mech was gone. Startled, she shot her head back and forth, looking for him. A small, contented sound towards her shoulder alerted her to his presence. He had his head on her shoulder, expertly dodging the spike placed there, and had grabbed hold of her arm. He was smiling, his eyes opened halfway. Looking back up at BlackArachnia with half-open eyes, he had the most adorable smile on his face, the kind that said "I trust you with my life, because you are my mother, and I love you."

Maybe being a mother wasn't so bad.


	3. Questions

Sari hated school.

She didn't like all of the squiggly shapes that were supposed to mean something. She didn't like how hard some of the teachers tried to sound 'cool'. Her teacher was kinda cool, and pretty caught up with the times. But he still said Cool or Woah. Not the mix of the two words kids used now. But there was one more thing she hated the most about school.

She couldn't talk about her family.

That day at Sumdac Systems was kinda weird. Everyone there had to promise to keep quiet about it. Now the kids in her class wouldn't stop bugging her about it before and after school started and during recess. They kept asking questions like "where did your family come from?" or "are you a robot too?" and wouldn't even start asking her about stuff that actually mattered.

They never asked to play with her anymore. And they wouldn't talk about her older brothers either. They never asked about Bulkhead's paintings or Bumblebee's racing times or Daddy's 'job' as a firefighter. They would only talk to her about her family being giant robots and bugging her to see them transform. She saw them transform all the time, it wasn't very exciting, not at all.

So she hid.

She didn't care if they went looking for her. She just wanted all the questions to stop. They didn't ask any of the questions she wanted to answer. She asked questions other kids answered about their brothers and sisters and what their parents did and what their voices sounded like. She didn't ask questions about where they came from or if they had brown hair (which was really strange by this year).

She sighed, and turned toward the other side of her hiding place. It was between two of the buildings, the ones between the older kids' building and the first grade building. She saw a girl with pink hair and a kitty cat hat. The girl didn't know that Sari would look at her, so she turned away. Sari was left staring at her back.

Her face scrunched.

"You're here to ask me more questions aren't you?" She crossed her arms. They were the colors of her older brothers, the twins. Her outfit was very colorful and bulkhead had made it all by himself. It showed all of her family's colors in at least one place, and the berets in her hair were her daddy's colors. But this girl wasn't colorful at all; all she had was a brown dress and black shoes with white socks. Her hat was white.

She said nothing.

"Haa… well, go on. Ask me a question." She wasn't too happy about this. But if she wanted to ask questions so badly, she'd answer them. Maybe she'd tell everyone else and they'd stat playing with her again instead of asking her questions. She saw the girl turn back toward her and look down at her hands. She started asking her first question. Sari expected it to be about her family.

"M..My name…" Sari looked at her strangely, waiting for her to finish. It took a while, but she finally started up again. "Toeto… my name…" Eh? What did that mean? When Sari didn't get an answer back, she remembered that Bunny wasn't with her right now. He was in her backpack in the classroom, ready to hear Sari whine to him about the annoying questions.

"Excuse me?" Sari asked. The girl looked back up at her. Sari could see that she had big eyes, the color between pink and orange. She must be Japanese or something. Sari never saw her before, so maybe she was new. She waited for her to answer.

"Eto…" Sari said nothing, and just tilted her head at the girl. She looked like she might cry at any second now. "Watashi no namae wa toeto desu!" Whatty what wha? What did that mean? Sari couldn't ask her, when she heard the really loud bell ring from the main building. She looked back at where the girl was, but she wasn't there anymore. After staring for a bit, she just went back to class.

* * *

Hey Bunny? "Yeah?" What does … Witshee nunmah tododsoo mean? "Um… where did you hear that?" Well there was this weird girl I sa—

"Alright class, settle down. We can talk with our friends later, okay? Right now, I want to introduce you to our new student." New student? Maybe that girl Sari saw earlier was the new student. At least she'd know her name.

"Come on out, dear, it's okay." The teacher said. Then, from behind a small box, she saw the girl look at everyone from behind it. She had her head in a funny place, so she looked sideways. It reminded Sari of that one time Jetfire went on a fake adventure to find the Ultimate Super Happy Rainbow Cactus of Magical Destiny, where she was supposed to be the "Happy" part, Bulkhead was the "Super", Jetstorm was the "Rainbow", and Bumblebee was the "Ultimate". It was very funny, so Sari smiled wide at the girl.

She walked over to the teacher, looking straight at Sari, who had taken to sitting all the way at the back since that day at Sumdac Systems. Her hand was over her mouth, and her body was to the side. Out of that dusty old place between the two buildings—"Alley, I believe?" Shut up Bunny.

"Kids, this is Toeto Maguro Meguri. She came here all the way from Japan, and her name means 'Shy River of Tuna.'" The teacher said. He smiled and some of the kids laughed at the silly name. The girl looked kinda sad, almost like she was about to cry. She was still looking at Sari, who smiled wide and gave her a wink. She seemed a bit better after that.

"So, Toeto, how long have you been in Detroit?" The teacher said. Toeto looked back up at him, and at the other kids.

"Ano… ichi gatsu." Toeto said. The teacher looked at her, and said to the rest of the class what she had said. Only in English.

"She said she's been here for a month now. Toeto, why don't you go take your seat now. We have plenty of space." Toeto stared at the rest of the class. Slowly, she climbed up the stairs of the slanted room, and reached the top of the class, all the way in the back. She sat right next to Sari, never taking her eyes off of her. It was kinda creepy.

"So, class, since we know what Toeto's name means, why don't we all come up and tell everyone what our names mean?" The teacher said.

"Okay!" The rest of the class said.

"Me first! Me first!" Gabriel, the little boy in blue headphones and sunglasses waved his arm high in the air.

"Alright, Gabriel, come on up." Gabriel jumped out of his seat and rand up to the front of the room. He took in a big breath and smiled.

"My name means 'strong man of God'! My mom says that God this big guy in the sky that makes good things happen."Gabriel said, smiling. Sari wasn't sure who 'God' was. Maybe he was the AllSpark for people. He must be a nice man.

"Alright Gabriel. Who's next?" The teacher asked. Then, one by one, everyone came up and told everyone what their name meant. Ishmael's meant 'all will hear' and Mitch didn't know what his name meant. The teacher said that his name meant 'loyal child' or something like that. Then it was Sari's turn.

She stood up at the front, giving a death stare at the class. She didn't like this. No doubt everyone would start asking her questions about why giant robots from space would name her Sari. But she had to, so she took in a breath and told the class what her name meant.

"My name is from this weird Indian cloth thing that you wrap around yourself. It's supposed to be very beautiful." Sari said. She took out her breath and didn't even start walking off the stage when Daniel blurted out a question.

"What to your brothers' names mean?" Sari looked up at Daniel, right in the middle of the room, with his hand in the air stupidly. Sari heard the teacher start to say something, but stopped him. She just answered his question.

"Bumblebee's means that he's a bumbler, Bulkhead's name means he's really strong, Jetfire and Jetstorm are jets and they have fire and wind powers, BlackArachnia, my mom, means "dark spider", my dad Optimus' name means "greatest," Prowl means "to hide", Jazz means "to follow", Ratchet means "to go forward", and Arcee is short for "Remote Controlled."

"That shut him up." Why don't you, Bunny?

* * *

Sari was hiding in a new place now, the place behind the bathroom that no one went into because it was broken. She brought Bunny this time.

Daniel was annoying, huh? "Actually he only asked one question this time." It must be a new record for him. "what about that Toeto girl? She wouldn't stop staring at you ever since you saw her in that alley earlier." And exactly how do you know that? "You told me." Oh.

"Eto… Sari?" looking where the sound came from, she saw little Toeto staring right through her. Her hand was up at her mouth, really sad looking. Sari just looked at her.

"Did you… want to say something?" Sari looked at Toeto and waited for an answer.

"Ka… Kan.. Ai… Shiito… Uiso yu?" She said it pretty slowly, so Sari didn't understand what she was saying. "Maybe if you stopped thinking like you were writing a story you would think a bit more clearly." Oh quit it. Just tell me what she said!

"She asked to sit with you."

Sari looked at Toeto. She looked back. Sari smiled.

"Sure."


	4. Camping

"Hey, Jetfire?"

"Yes, Bumblebee?"

"Why exactly am _I_ carrying you around?"

"Because Brother is too cold."

Bumblebee grumbled to himself. Stupid space barnacles on the old Cargo Ship. Those gross things meant that he and Jetfire had to go all the way out to North Sister Island in Lake Erie, a small block of land that used to house a \one-time volcano about 50-sum years ago. It had cliffs big enough to hide two Cybertronian Ships inside the small savannah in the now-extinct Volcano, one of them the Cargo ship.

Jetfire had taken the top of the ship and Bumblebee took the bottom. He didn't try all that hard though, and thought he saw one tiny little barnacle somewhere in the back near a large mound. It looked a bit unnatural, but he ignored it and went to sit down. And when Jetfire was done with the top of the ship, he had flown to the top of a cliff to check if he missed anything. Then the cliff crumbled in his weight.

Which Bumblebee felt he was about to do right now.

"Could you please get off? My back's starting to hurt."

"Alright." Jetfire fell down right next to him, staring blankly up at the stars. Bumblebee couldn't care less though, and he slumped down next to the biggest tree he could find. Deciding that the best thing he could do was let his processor wander randomly, he changed his perception of time to go a bit slower. It actually meant that his processor thought faster, but it didn't really matter. He stared at the others. Jetstorm was there, duh, and Uncle Prowl came to keep an eye on them. He insisted on bringing Sari along with them, saying something about "needing to get away from technology for a while."

If Bumblebee had his way, he'd be at the Plant recharging on the couch. But of course, he didn't have his way. And now, not only were they in the outskirts of the island near a pier, but Jetfire's inner workings were half-frozen from falling into Lake Eerie. Seeing as he and Jetstorm were the means of getting to the island in the first place (since they were all small enough to be carried by the two jets), having one of them unable to fly was not a good idea. And no one even considered leaving one twin behind while the other went back and forth with people one at a time; they knew all too well what happened when the twins were too far away from each other. So until he felt better, they couldn't go back to Detroit, and taking the ships weren't an option yet.

Stranded on this rock, he just let himself slump down and sulk. Bumblebee stared up at Jetstorm, sitting with his legs extended out and propping Jetfire on his shoulder. Bumblebee stared down at Sari, wearing a jacket that looked just like his chassis. If his ego was working properly, he'd smile at her. But he was too tired.

"We'll have to camp out here for now." Uncle Prowl said. Bumblebee was grateful for the rest, but he couldn't help but wonder why they couldn't just sleep in the Cargo Ship. But then he remembered how dusty it was inside that place. And wouldn't help Jetfire's backfiring, either; when he backfires, fire came out of that small space in between his optics (it couldn't really be called an olfactory sensor; those things didn't exist on flying Cybertronians). It helped re-warm his workings, though, so that meant that he wouldn't be sick for much longer, really.

"How do you expect us to camp out when he don't have any tent or fire?" Sari asked. She seemed kinda grumpy. Bumblebee opened his mouth and let out some stale oxygen inside his systems, all this 'fresh air' was overflowing his insides. When he on-lined his optics, Jetstorm had Sari in his servo by now, lifting her up to eye-level.

"You can be sleeping in certain one of our alt-modes if you is wishing to." Jetstorm replied in broken English. Bumblebee had no idea where they caught that accent, but seeing that, as far as anyone could tell, they were spat out from a dwarf planet just outside the solar System, he didn't think about it too much. He dropped his gaze down at Jetfire, staring dumbly up to the sky. Bumblebee just stared at him, their faceplates showing mutual blankness towards each other. His scanner picked up some small dust particles, accumulating somewhere near Jetfire's optics. Jetfire scrunched his faceplate upwards a bit.

Uh oh.

"LOOK OUT! HE'S GONNA BLOW!" Bumblebee pulled Jetstorm behind him, Sari still inside Jetstorm's hand, right when Jetfire jumped up a little and backfired, lighting the tree Bumblebee was next to on fire. Staring dumbly, the tree fell sideways and turned into a huge blaze that managed to heat Bumblebee up a good sum. It must be doing wonders for Jetfire, since he sighed at the warmth.

"I think you've got enough fire, Sari." Uncle Prowl joked, his tone full of the kind of love you hear at a Thanksgiving table while stuffing your face with turkey. Least that's what Bumblebee thought, since he watched a whole lot of Thanksgiving Specials on television. Though they never really did much on Thanksgiving, they did give Sari a big turkey to eat and ate as much energon as they could stomach.

Bulkhead always won the Energon-pie eating contest.

* * *

"BUMBLEBEE! WAKE UP!"

First thing Bumblebee remembered after hearing that voice yelling was jump up in robot mode with a giant Blanket on his head, not even noticing the unhappy groan that came from Sari. His processor never turned itself on at such a fast pace, guided only by the emotion of fear. Freaked out of his mind, he could barely piece together something else he had heard before Sari's yell. It was a strange sound, like a monstrous groaning of unfitting metal parts being forced together. That could only mean one thing.

"MONSTER!"

"AAAH! MONSTER! WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!" Turning around, he just barely saw Jetfire running straight towards him, and felt his weight coiling around his chassis in fear. He was really heavy, and he wasn't nearly as warm as he usually was. It almost made him shiver from the cold chassis. Though their position reminded him of one of those old cartoons that had a talking dog in it. Scooby-Doo? Yeah… that's what it was called. His thoughts were interrupted by Jetstorm's voice barely reaching his horned audio receptors, what with Jetfire clinging to his head and upper chassis. He wasn't nearly as warm as he usually felt, Bumblebee noted.

"There's nothing to be being fearful about! There is having no existence of monsters, brothers." Jetstorm asked, putting a servo on Bumblebee's shoulder and prying Jetfire off. They really did have very different body temperatures. Thinking about it for a bit, his internal scanner noted that Jetfire's usual body heat was around 124.3 degrees Fahrenheit; while Jetstorm's usual body heat was around 44.1 degrees Fahrenheit. No wonder Jetfire had to keep his distance from his brother in this state; his current body temperature was about 77.2 degrees Fahrenheit. That and he was being a little annoying, being half-unable to move his limbs.

But Bumblebee really shouldn't be paying attention to his scanners.

"Oh, don't you go all older-brother on me now, Jetstorm! I've seen enough creature features to know that every poor sap that ends up camping out, winds up getting chased down by a monster!" Bumblebee complained, talking with his servos a bit. Jetfire had Sari in his servos now, holding her close to his chassis like he usually did when one of them were scared. Uncle Prowl had apparently woken up by then from his weird-o Ninja sitting position. He was in his alt-mode flashing his headlights around the forest. Ignoring the cliff they had stayed the night near, he had found a large animal with brownish black fur covering most of its body. Uncle Prowl was back in his robot mode.

"They're called _bears, _and they're hardly Mons-"

There was that growl again, an eerie clang of random metal parts mixing in with a non-existent voice. Only it was closer this time. Bumblebee had turned around, though he wished he hadn't. Right there was a giant cluster of Space Barnacles, with random construction vehicles jutting out of it like some sort of techno-organic Frankenstein's monster. It had one giant Barnacle in the front, possibly the leader of the whole cluster. It had shovels for hands.

"Jee Uncle Prowl, I didn't know Bears had _shovels_ for hands!"

A pained cry came from Jetfire, while Sari has screaming right into her custom-made beanie hat, designed to resemble Jetstorm's head (and, to a lesser extent, Optimus'). Jetstorm was silent, but he had his arms back in a motion ready to throw a gust of wind if necessary. Bumblebee kept himself silent. It was really hard to do that.

"Shhh! First we need to determine this creature's intentions." Uncle Prowl stepped forward, expecting something a bit calmer than what he experienced. Then everything happened at once. By the time Bumblebee had time to think for himself, he was somehow right next to Uncle Prowl helping him up with Jetstorm. Turning around, he saw the Barnacle Monster underneath a big swath of trees, uprooted by Jetstorm's hurricane-like gust of wind. Probably.

"Did you really have to uproot the _trees_, Jetstorm?" Uncle Prowl asked, his tone a bit pained. Myth confirmed.

"Hey, can we narrate a nature documentary _later_!" The Barnacle Monster wasn't staying still for long. It was already groaning and mumbling in anger, pushing off random trees while it struggled to get back up and make them all Autobot Shish-kebabs. Well, maybe Decepticon Shish-kebabs too, since Jetfire and Jetstorm could fly. He had a theory that those two were most likely the last living Decepticons in the universe. Good thing they were on his side.

"Come on!" Uncle Prowl led the way back behind the cliff, running up the hill fast as he could. Jetstorm, propping Jetfire on his own back for once, flew up with the jet-boosters in his stabilizing servos. Bumblebee thought that it shouldn't be too hard for him, since he was designed to withstand atmospheric re-entry, being an all-purpose space vehicle and all. Bumblebee drove uphill as fast as he could with Sari inside him.

"What do you think those barnacles want?" Sari asked him.

"Maybe they're just mad that we burned off their brothers."

"Yeah, about that. Since when did barnacles have the ability to control other machines?"

"I dunno. Maybe one of them got away and was mutated by something on earth. Or something."

By the time Bumblebee made it to the other side of the cliff, Prowl had crouched down with Jetstorm, and Bumblebee stayed n his car mode. Jetfire was on Jetstorm's back, looking like he was either going to throw up or fall into a coma. Maybe both.

"I think we lost it."

"Yeah. For five nano-clicks." Jetfire groaned a bit, clearly unhappy about… something. "Hey! It's not my fault those Barnacles are chasing after us!" Uncle Prowl shushed him harshly. The hiss that came out of his mouth almost sounded like steam. Bumblebee grumbled a bit, but shut himself up when he heard the Barnacle monster's strange groan again. Stumbling backwards almost made him trip, but luckily the Barnacle Monster wasn't anywhere too close. After hearing the groan, the sound got more and more indistinct. He wondered where the Barnacle monster was.

"Alright, it's gone. Now, here's one thing we need to do. We need to make sure the barnacles don't touch us. Whatever mutated the barnacles seems to have taken over the mechanical capabilities of old construction vehicles somehow." Uncle Prowl stated matter-of-factly. Bumblebee grumbled a bit and fiddled with his fingers to have something else to do in this creepy instance of life imitating art. Seriously, this was almost exactly like that one movie he saw where not-from-space barnacles had been mutated and made a large ship turn into a giant monster.

"Well what are we supposed to do? We can't burn those things." Sari asked with her face and voice full of concern. Or maybe fear. Or maybe she was hungry or something.

"Not to be reminding me please." He didn't bother turning to Jetfire's voice. No doubt Jetstorm would comfort him better than he could, anyhow. They always had a strong bond with each other. Though if you asked him, Jetstorm made a lot more sense when you talked to him. Bumblebee constantly stumbled upon Jetfire's prized cactus somewhere when looking for the remote that Uncle Prowl would hide somewhere.

"Maybe we can. Last I checked there was more than one way to start a fire." Uncle Prowl sounded a little amused. Bumblebee perked up a bit. This was going to be good.

Uncle Prowl had managed to track the Barnacle Monster's pounding imprints on the wet ground (the wind and rain were starting to kick in this October). They had found a large door on the side of the cliff right underneath the barnacle-infested ship they cleaned earlier that day. Bumblebee started grumbling to himself about missing one barnacle that he thought was completely irrelevant. Mistake number one.

"Alright, this is where the Barnacle Monster's tracks start. Chances are it's hiding somewhere inside. Be ready for anything." Uncle Prowl mused. He took out one of his unlimited shuriken (Bumblebee was pretty sure Prowl had tapped into his one personal Transwarp Dimension. Every Cybertronian had a Transwarp aura around them, which was why they didn't get crushed to death when they went through a space bridge. Looking around a bit, Jetstorm had taken Jetfire off his back and squished his servos close to his chassis, ready to toss wind. Bringing out his stingers for good measure, he looked down at Sari and saw her make a small mud-ball. Everyone was quiet…

"Attention Barnacle Monster! Come out with your hand over your… well, you don't have a head… but you get the idea!" Mistake number two.

He felt his family's optics (save one pair of eyes) pierce right through his armor-plating. He tried to look down to avoid the glares from his brothers and uncle. All he saw was a disappointed Sari slouching, her mud-ball still in hand. "What? I'm just trying to break the tension!"

The glare he got from Uncle Prowl was definitely not approving. He looked like he was about to say something, before Jetfire walked up to him and started knocking on Prowl's head. He seemed kinda confused. Bumblebee shrugged it off, though. It's not like he didn't act like this most of the time, when most of the 'adults' weren't around.

"Do you mind?" The tone in his Uncle's voice was very displeased and not approving, his ninja-servo grabbing Jetfire's blocky white one after only the second knock. Then a small glob of mud landed on his head. "Do _you _mind!" Everyone looked down at Sari, lifting up her mud-ball to help prove it wasn't her.

But if it wasn't her, then who was it?

"Uh… guys? Please to be looking up now?" Jetstorm had said, pointing one of his servos toward the top of the cliff. Up there, there was a large glob of random mass, a cross between organically soft and mechanically sturdy. The Barnacle Monster! And it was getting closer!

"Run!" bumblebee cried out, grabbing Sari and running inside the door. Jetfire almost followed, but Jetstorm had stopped him. Bumblebee didn't understand why until he and Sari got trapped on the other side of the door, a large glob of mud almost completely covering the door. The only real amount of light was coming from small cracks in the mud. Unfortunately, the dark New Moon they had that night wasn't helping at all.

"Now what do we do?" Bumblebee fumbled a bit and looked down at his sister. His human sister, so fragile she had to put extra things on top of her regular chassis just to survive. He noted that his mom decided to wear something on top of her as well, just to keep Sari from feeling isolated.

Isolated…

"Come on, there's got to be a way out of here somewhere."

"Where exactly _is_ here?" Bumblebee didn't know, so he didn't say anything. Sari had grown up with him, so she would know not to press him for answers. She usually did that with Bulkhead, anyway. He knew way more than Bumblebee about things that Sari didn't know about. She never really asked him about his old job as a space-bridge technician, even though he did have a lot of promise in the field of electrical circuitry and components.

Wait… what was he doing again?

Oh yeah, finding another way out of here. Wherever _here_ was. So far he only saw this really long corridor that didn't seem to end, with a bunch of moss and leaky-things littering the walls and floor. Whatever this place was, it needed a good tune-up. Soon enough, they had managed to get into a rather large space, with a circular dent in the floor and a large computer on the wall. There were millions of test tubes everywhere, though they were all broken down and left completely useless.

"Woah!"

"What happened here?" Sari asked herself. Walking towards the rather large computer, Bumblebee thought about how things were so big on Earth, with holographic touch-screens that you could mess around with all you liked if you wired it up correctly. Almost… Cybertronian.

"Maybe we could try asking the computer?" bumblebee suggested. Sari nodded, and asked him to put her down to find the on switch. When Sari started looking for it, Bumblebee noticed a half-open panel right next to the screen. Crouching down, he carefully unscrewed the panel to see what was inside, just to pass the time until Sari found the on switch. Looking into the new dent in the wall, he observed the wiring of this abandoned laboratory.

It was most definitely old.

Bumblebee decided to fix it up a bit, messing around with the screws and orders of the wires. His absent-minded fixing of the circuitry was a normal pastime for him when he got bored, and usually ended up fixing things no one even realized were broken. Bumblebee shrugged them off, though. Him having some sort of secret 'diamond-in-the-rough' talent for circuitry would be like saying Bulkhead was a _genius_ in _anything_.

"Hey Bumblebee! Did you just fix the screen?" Sari asked him. Bumblebee looked at Sari a bit perplexed. This circuitry was for the screen? Sari apparently understood his expression, so she answered him. "This screen kept going in and out of focus and stuff, and now it's working like it was made in this time period!" Sari explained. Bumblebee just made a sound and shrugged it off. Sari snuffed in his direction and just went towards a place where she could see the whole screen well enough. Bumblebee did the same, and once he was there, Sari pulled a remote out of her pocket.

"Where'd you get that?"

"Plot hole." Bumblebee wanted to laugh. That was their little joke, him and his brothers and sister. Whenever they didn't want to explain something, because it was a secret or otherwise, they'd say 'plot hole'. It left them with something kinda funny to giggle over for a few seconds before doing something else. Looking at Sari again, he saw her press a button and the screen came to life. It was just like one of those ancient "Windows 2000" layouts. Unfortunately Sari's remote only had one button on it.

"Now what?"

"I dunno. Maybe if we try to find a way to…" Sari opened her mouth big and yawned. Bumblebee frowned and picked her up. Bringing her up to his eye-level, he stared right into Sari's droopy eyes. Her new winter outfit was adorable, and she herself was pretty cute to anyone. Bumblebee seemed gifted to have a little sister as cute as her. He wondered if he was cute for a bit. She closed her eyes and yawned again.

Bumblebee put Sari down and sat next to her. Sari looked up at him and later crawled to Bumblebee's stabilizing servo. Leaning against him, she fell asleep quietly. Bumblebee just stared at her and fell asleep himself.

There was a boom.

Bumblebee shot back up from his little nap, knocking Sari on her tummy. What the spark was that! Unable to think clearly for a moment, Bumblebee just stares into nothing. Whatever it was it wasn't good.

"What was that?" Hearing Sari's whisper, he scrunched up his faceplate. No one liked it when their family members were scared or unhappy, really. Though occasionally they all had light-hearted squabbles every now and then. Sitting upwards, he looked back down at sari, putting a finger to his mouth. Thinking for a bit, he heard some clanging of metal from far away, through the corridor they came in. At first he saw nothing.

Then Jetfire and Jetstorm come screaming into the corridor. Not expecting them at all, Bumblebee screams before Jetfire jumps on him. Coiling around Bumblebee's body in the same manner as earlier, his sitting position does nothing for his weight. He collapses from Jetfire's weight.

On-lining his optics again, he notices Jetfire next to him, though in the opposite direction. Staring at him for a few seconds, it was only a matter of time before he started asking questions again.

"What the heck is going on, guys!" Jetfire only sat back up. Bumblebee stood upright again and helped Jetfire back up. He looked at Jetstorm, expecting him to answer. "Well?"

"Err… you is seeing… the Barnacles…" Jetstorm stuttered. Bumblebee raised an eye ridge at his older brother. He was rarely in a position where he didn't know what to say. It unnerved him to no end.

A strange sound reached Bumblebee's audio receptors. He turned towards the corridor, where the sound was repeated. It sounded just like the Barnacle Monster, only now with a different undertone of voice to it. Staring through the stark blackness, Bumblebee took a step backward. Heavy footsteps come closer and closer. Whatever it was, it wasn't friendly.

"I don't think we want to know anymore." Bumblebee couldn't agree more with his younger sister. He wished what he saw was a dream. First came a hand, covered in barnacles. Then another, holding on to the door as though it would fall down.

Then Uncle Prowl popped out of the darkness. Bumblebee didn't have time to think. Whatever happened, it meant Prowl was after them. Screaming, he instinctively grabbed for Sari and turned around, trying to find a place to run.

"This way!" Bumblebee turns towards the new sound. Pained and desperate, he recognized the deep tone as the one of his Jetstorm. He points through a new corridor that seemingly appeared out of nowhere. Bumblebee didn't care where it came from, really. He just followed his older brothers through the corridor. With Jetstorm running with Jetfire's servo tightly in his, lagging behind a bit, meant that Bumblebee was in the front. He didn't care; he just wanted to get away from that monster.

It was really hard for him to believe it used to be his Uncle. Soon enough, there was a large door in the side of the corridor. Thinking quickly, he opens it.

"In here!" Bumblebee shouted. Running inside, he kept a hand on the steel, sliding door. When Jetstorm finally blasted inside with his twin in an iron grip, He closed the door with every bit of strength he had, making triple sure it was air-tight. Finally leaning against it from exhaustion, he slumped down on the door, head lagging, and left his optics online. Finding Jetstorm's gaze, he lifted his head only a little, just to see him better. He really wanted to know what was going on.

"Well? You going to explain all of this or not?" Bumblebee asked, attitude dripping from his words. Jetstorm looked at Jetfire, his eye-ridges turning the normally lower slant on his visor upwards. He rubbed the back of his head for a bit, and Bumblebee raised his own eye-ridge. Jetstorm finally sighed, took a deep breath, and told them all about it.

"There was being Barnacle Monster that is falling from sky and then Uncle Prowl is running away with us after the mud had falling on top of opening that you were being trapped in. We keep on having to be running and then Jetfire falling into mud and coughing. So I picked him up and am bonking his head to be ridding him of mud in face. Then we is running away some more before Uncle Prowl is being hurting the barnacles with shuriken thingy! After that he is being tricking the monster with holograms and burning off some barnacles with jet boosters. But then monster attacks Uncle Prowl!

"Then Jetfire is backfiring and fire burn off most of barnacles on machinery. Most of the barnacles are being dead but Uncle Prowl is being infected by barnacles! So we are having to run away and Jetfire backfires again at the snow while we is running and then we run in here!"

"… Right. Just give me a second to process all that." Bumblebee scratched the back of his head, thinking for a bit.

Thump.

Tensing, Bumblebee sat straight up. He hoped dearly that it was just a book of something falling on the floor. Then the sound came again. It sounded more like a thwack now. There was a backdrop of straining metal, denting and curving ever so slightly. The sound was more from the age than the force placed upon it. Other than that sound, all Bumblebee could hear was the far away dripping of a leaky pole.

Then a hand sprouted from right next to Bumblebee's head.

There was no time to get out of the way. The hand had already grabbed at Bumblebee's head. Its thumb managed to press up against Bumblebee's upper dental plate. The taste was horrid and disgusting, the raw organic whatever on the hand tasted absolutely terrible. A second hand pulled him farther backwards, before he began to lose consciousness. His optics were blurring a bit, and it was harder to think.

He heard more scraping. Ancient, rusted metals being pulled apart at the seams. Bumblebee felt the painful collision with the dented-to-a-point metal on the wall. He and the fall were on the floor now. The floor. Something was pulling him away from knowing what was happening. It wasn't long before all he could do was listen intently.

He heard the cries of a little girl. Two moderately deep voices, one higher pitched, were babbling now incomprehensible nonsense into an echoing metal corridor. There was a strange moan, mixed with the makeshift, mutated voice of a monster.

The last thing he heard was his own voice joining in the monstrous noise.

* * *

Bumblebee woke with a start. Where was he? What day was it? Why was his name Bumblebee again?

It took barely a nano-klik to figure out everything. He was in the Plant, in his own room. His soft recharge bank was only one of two, in a room he shared with Sari. It was October 22, 2106, which it had only been for about 4 hours now. And his name was Bumblebee because his Drill Sergeant, the late Sentinel Minor, called him a 'bumbler.'

He thought about where he was last night. He remembered Space Barnacles and an old Research Facility. He also remembered being attacked by Uncle Prowl and infested with mutated Space Barnacles. Then he remembered nothing. All he could remember were broken voices, saying something about the 'experimental chemicals mutating alien species'. Worried for a bit, he tried searching his memories for a bit more information. He picked up a few more words.

"We should take... Mother will be having displeasure… cold has disappeared."

Bumblebee sighed a bit, and decided to leave the rest of his queries filed away to ask the others. Maybe around noon. But then he remembered that his favorite show was on at noon.

Eh, it's probably a better idea to leave it alone.


	5. Screw the Past

She knew her oldest son didn't like getting wet.

Well, none of BlackArachnia's sons liked getting wet, nor did her only daughter, who had hidden herself SOMEWHERE. But that didn't matter; they had to get clean, Bumblebee, Jetstorm and Jetfire especially. Their little mishap at North Sister Island last week did nothing to improve their complexion, nor did the chocolate stains on all of Sari's clothes after Halloween. And tomorrow was the day they would be revealed to all of Detroit! She had heard that there was another big even scheduled for that day, and instead of having two events over two days, the authorities decided to show both of them at once. Or at least on the same day.

Either way, her boys (and invisible girl) simply _had_ to be clean, in order to give off the right first impression on the public as friends. It was a known fact that cleaner, good smelling any things attracted more positive reactions than anything less, so they _had_ to be clean. Whether they liked it or not.

"But mootheeerrr!"

"No buts, Jetfire. I know you're not fond of water—"

"Not fond? More like he fragging HATES it!"

"You watch your language young mech! Or do you want to have another staring contest with the corner?"

Grr. Arg. A short stare-down by her youngest, yellow-est boy let her know that he wouldn't argue anymore. Throwing him a snide look, she twiddled her spider-leg appendages for good measure, and watched as Bumblebee grabbed the nearest barrel of soap-water and put it on his head, the soap-water splashing all over him. Least he'd gotten _that_ much done. Now where was SARI!

She turned to look back at Jetfire, and found herself staring at a barrel of soap-water with a sloppy, 5-second painting of Jetfire's head on it. She could barely even tell it was Jetfire; just a blotch of orange paint with brown on top of it. Great. Now Sari AND Jetfire were missing. Sighing, she turned over to Jetstorm, holding a hose splashing water over his shoulders, scraping away at an annoying piece of dirt inside that strange square whole built in for who-knows-why. At least _he_ was doing what he was supposed to.

"Hey, Jetstorm?" His head shot up, looking straight through her in that way that meant he had no idea why she was talking to him. Wasn't he paying attention? "Do you know why 'Jetfire' here looks so… bloated?" Her voice dripping wet with sarcasm, she waved her arm down at the barrel of soap-water and turned it to show the annoyingly half-baked painting on the side. He hummed to himself a bit, coming closer and dropping the hose. She just looked at him for a second, tapping her stabilizing servo/leg while waiting for him to come to a conclusion. After a few nano-kliks…

"That isn't Jetfire."

Well, duh! She knew that. She shot him a look that hopefully said the same thing, and Jetstorm stood up straight and shrugged his shoulders, lifting his hands up. She knew him well enough to know this meant he had absolutely no idea what she was really talking about. That was just _great_! She sighed. Jetstorm wasn't very good at catching sarcasm. Or metaphors. Or similes. In fact, if it wasn't completely straightforward, he'd probably get a headache trying to figure out what it meant via logical meaning. It got annoying. _Very_ annoying.

"Hey, Mom! I found him!" She turned full-circle and found herself looking at her largest, most detached 'son'. He didn't really act like her son, nor did he act like a superior. He was usually just... there. Though there _were_ times when he would stop painting or playing video games enough to express himself to her, though usually it's for the sad things. They didn't really know much about each other. That usually made her sad.

But now, it just made her more annoyed that he managed to make her thoughts go off-topic. Walking up to him, she stared up at him and waited for an explanation. He waved his arm to his right and she followed, finally glaring at the tower of boxes he had his arm in front of. She scrutinized it; the tower was suspiciously straight and neat, and in a vertical pile rather than a random blob like most of their box piles were like. That meant one thing.

"Alright Jetfire, you can come out now."

"I do not knowing of this Jetfire of whom you are speaking of."

"Uh-huh. Come out and le' me clean out that lying mouth of yours, buster." A groan came from behind the boxes. Jetfire walked out, his shoulders sagging down and his back slouching more than it should. Feeling her organic cheeks push up against each other, she reached her hand and touched the weird little buckle-looking thing on his chin. She pushed it up to help him took at her, reaching behind her to grab what she knew was a box of soap. Grabbing a random handful of soap from inside it, she jammed it into his mouth. He obviously didn't expect that, so while he was coughing trying to keep soap out of his systems, she grabbed the barrel he had half-heartedly painted on and splashed most of it on him.

"Hey! That looks like fun! Water fight!" Turning around, she could barely see a flash of yellow before being splashed on with soap-water. It tasted bad. She grabbed hold of Jetfire's head before he slinked away again, and gave him the rest of the water and winked. The sly look on his face told her he'd be more than happy to. The look on Bumblebee's face, however, told her he knew that a water fight _probably_ wasn't the best idea.

"Oh slag."

"Be watching your language, young mech!" A large splash and a garbled protest later, and Bumblebee was stumbling backward with a barrel on his head and Jetfire scrubbing inside his storage compartment with a large handful of soap. Walking backwards until they had finally tripped on some boxes, BlackArachnia sighed angrily. Those two can figure things out on their own; she had to find Sari the Invisible Girl. But just to make sure…

"Jetstorm?" A large clatter was heard behind her. Worried, she found Jetstorm's legs with a piece of soap stuck inside the dent between his heel and foot, which always reminded her of slip-on-shoes. Reaching into the pile, she grabbed onto his hand and pulled him back up in a sitting position.

"Okay Jetstorm, I'm going to go look for Sari. I want you to make sure your brothers all get nice and squeaky clean. Okay?" Jetstorm got himself right back up and saluted her, the way Ratchet always told him to. For a split second she thought he was a bit too obedient for his own good. But at least he would help get everything done. She patted him on his shoulder, called him a very good boy, and began to walk away. A random protest from Bumblebee made her turn to look at Jetstorm. He was yelling at them and made a threat, looking pretty menacing and, through years of experience, she knew he'd be more than a worthy opponent.

Then he slipped on the soap on his foot.

* * *

There were so many flashes of light that it was almost impossible to see the almost flawless recreation of the dinosaurs both flying above and in their little ditches on Dino Drive. This was the first of the two presentations today. The Dinobots. Dinosaur Robots, created for display on the Dino Drive Theme Park. The park itself was unique in which you could either drive right through it while your Holo-Radio would show you details of the history of dinosaurs, or you could walk through it with a Tutor-Bot telling you everything.

It was very boring up until now. Now, they were being shown to the public after seven years. Now, there were much more interesting Dinobots to look at. Now, there were going to be giant robots on the headlines, mega-screens, Internet, and across town. There would be no more hiding. No more privacy other than their home, which would stay an airtight secret.

BlackArachnia hoped this wouldn't go to Bumblebee's head.

…

Yeah right.

"..But we're not done yet! Today we have a special on giant robots! For as well as the Dinobots, we have also discovered a secret unit of individual, self-aware, thinking robots! A 'Family', if you will. City of Detroit! I humbly present to you…

The Automan Family!" That was their cue.

Stretching her Spider-limbs to detach from Optimus, she heard an echo of transformation noises, as well as her own. Chu-chu-cha-chick. Chu-chu-cha-chick. Chu-chu-cha-chick. It all happened at the same time, hers sounding slightly more organic. It only took a few seconds for their entire family to be fully transformed, standing tall and mighty to the small humans. There was silence.

Then a deafening cheer and a blinding flash of light.

"Woah! That's a bit too much!" She had to close all four of her eyes to avoid the glare, stumbling beck a bit and bumping against Optimus. She could barely hear a muffled coo from Optimus, trying to keep her calm. How could Bumblebee ever want all this attention? If you asked her it was annoying. And it was only going on for 30 seconds!

It would've gone on longer were it not for the Dinobots.

She didn't know how it happened, but there was a loud, metallic thud. Then the lights stopped, and BlackArachnia finally had enough time to focus on something. And that "something" was a Tyrannosaurus Rex staring right through her. She felt herself scream, but her audio receptors were still adjusting to the sudden quiet. A giant foot sprang up, lifting the dinosaur right up to the main roads. There was no time to think, only time to run. She was faster as a spider. Think spider!

The three new Dinobots stomped their way up to the roads, their roaring finally reaching BlackArachnia's audio receptors. Scattering her legs forward, she crawled up on the big-boy's back, looking for something. An off-switch, a control panel—anything! Luckily for her spiders were almost impossible to shake off, but all the squirming from Mr. big shot here sure made her organic parts a little sick. But she didn't have any time to be sick! She scraped off some of the artificial skin on the dinosaur, and kept going until she finally sound a small control panel. Scraping it off with her pinkie finger, there was a big jumble of circuit-boards and electricity, but no wires. That left one opportunity.

She jumped off the monster, recuperating with the rest of her family. She hung back a second to figure out what was going on. The twins were distracting the Pteranodon (or whatever it was called), Bulkhead was having a stare-down with the Triceratops, and Optimus had just finished being blown back by the Tyrannosaurus Rex. Maybe he was trying to help her? Humph, she could take care of herself, thank you very much!

"There's an electrical circuit board keeping those things online. Either we find an off switch or we beat the slag outta them!"

She didn't expect Bulkhead to jump out of nowhere and slam-dunk them with his wrecking ball. But then again, even for his size, it was very difficult to notice him in the first place. BlackArachnia wanted to kick herself right then and there; how could she just forget one of her kids? Well, if she wanted to pay more attention to Bulkhead, now was as good a time as any. Especially since he was beating the tar out of those Dinobots.

"Bulkhead! Get out of the way!"

"What was that grandma-AAA!" the Triceratops just sprang for Bulkhead, knocking him straight backwards, and up a ways. At least, up enough that he knocked Jetstorm right out of his place in the sky, which was pretty low to the ground to begin with. A metallic crack later and Jetfire fell right out of the ground, clutching his hip-guard and the left side of his head. If BlackArachnia hadn't been thinking on her feet, Jetfire would've crashed on the ground instead of in her arms.

Crouching low to the ground, she felt a surge of electricity and magnetism merge together with a crack, creating a blinding aura of energy around the three Dinobots. Using the appendages on her back, she crawled over to where Bulkhead was, letting Jetfire stand on his own two feet. Jazz and Prowl, who were generally silent the whole time, were trying to get Bulkhead up, and Jetstorm out. BlackArachnia helped, and Jetfire pushed as well, his left arm seemingly out of commission (or at least a bit banged up, even though physically it was perfectly fine).

Bulkhead had gotten all the way up, and Jetstorm was left with the left side of his circuitry pretty banged up, the sides of his torso exposing the circuitry inside. She thought about how hard it would be to look at something like that for Jetfire, so she grabbed the sides of his head and closed off his eyes. Jazz and Prowl helped Jetstorm back up, leading him over to Arcee, who gladly picked him up into her arms to analyze him. That woman had powerful eyes, surely.

"Mother! You can be letting my eyes go now, please?"

"Trust me Jetfire; you don't want to see this."

"But I am wanting to know what has happening to Jetstorm!"

"That's the part I don't want you to see. At least, not until it's patched up." With that, Jetfire stood still for a while, before backing up, his optics closed off, and burying his face in her chest, holding her tightly. The organic feelings in the back of her head registered a sense of fear and worry from Jetfire. Her only reaction was to hold him back.

Then the light from the Electro-Magnetic Pulse stopped. Looking toward the Dinobots, she found the artificial skin torn off, leaving the oddly-colored metallic outer shell showing. The Dinobots were perfectly still, not a sound or movement in the air.

"Mom! Dad!"

"SARI!" Her audio receptors caught a cacophony of other voices in her own. She was alright! Wait… where had she gone during all this? She must have been hiding. Well, at least she was safe. Their whole Family was safe, Detroit was safe. Everything was all back to normal. Well, except for Jetstorm.

And yet, for a split second, something in her head told her that it wasn't going to stay like this for long.

* * *

"Let's try this again shall we. You need to _concentrate_. Move like a _gentle wind. _Like this." Bulkhead watched his uncle Prowl kick the air after placing his hand in front of his face. It was smooth and quick, though he knew there was enough force in it to potentially damage his knee. It happened before.

"Now you try."

Bulkhead thought for a second. How would he move like a gentle wind? Maybe doing what Uncle Prowl did would help. Concentrating on who knows what, he lifted his claw up to his face, and contracted it all back. Then all Pits broke loose. He didn't know what he was crushing; he just knew he was crushing SOMETHING. Something crunched underneath his feet, and he felt something pull back after waving his arms back. Trying to kick, knowing he had turned somehow, he ended up losing his balance. And then he fell.

There was a groan underneath him. OH NO! Not again! The whole reason he asked Uncle Prowl to train him was because he nearly crushed half of Jetstorm! He jumped right back up to his feet, and looked down at his Uncle. Good, good, he wasn't dead or injured. He felt a bit of captured oxygen leave his systems, and nudged him a bit.

"Uncle Prowl?" It only took one nudge before he heard his optics focus and he moved his head a bit.

"Phew! That's a relief. I wouldn't want a repeat of what happened last night." He poked one of his claws towards his Uncle and lifted him back up to his feet, though Bulkhead knew he didn't really need it. He was just humoring him.

"Look, Bulkhead, I know you feel guilty for what happened last night but I assure you, Jetstorm will be fine."

"How can you be so sure?"

"Because he's got a family to help him through it. Just like I'm here for you." Bulkhead didn't expect that. But he supposed it should have been a bit more obvious to him. These two were the most reclusive of the family, they were the ones that just sat back and watched most of the time. Bulkhead smiled at him.

"Right. Let's try this again, shall we?"

"I'm just glad we're here on this island and not back home. Wouldn't want to break anything there."

"Focus, Bulkhead."

"Sorry."

* * *

RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR…

RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR…

RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR…

"Hello? ... Yes, this is Optimus Prime speaking… _What!_ The Dinobots escaped! We'll be right there!"

BlackArachnia groaned while she lifted herself from her web-hammock. There wasn't enough room in Optimus' room for them to share one big recharge panel. Besides, those things hurt her back. Optimus turned to her from his spot facing the other direction. He didn't even have to say if something was wrong. It was written all over his face.

"Dinobots?"

"You heard?"

"I'm not deaf, you know."

Optimus smiled at her, and she smiled back. Optimus went out of their room to wake up the others. She stayed in the room for a bit, waiting until everyone was finished grumbling and groaning. Then there was Optimus' muffled voice, and she decided to make her entrance. Quietly walking over to the living room, she caught her "sibling" Prowl voicing a bit of concern.

"-Expect Jetfire and Jetstorm to come along. With Jetstorm's injury and their mitotic link, they'd most likely get hurt."

"Hey!"

"We is not being that weak!"

"Well, maybe not normally. But Prowl _does_ have a point. No one wants you two to get yourselves killed out there." Optimus was right. He was usually right. He was good at making tough decisions and thinking strategically. Though it kinda took him a while to figure out how relationships worked.

"So we is going to be staying here all by ourselves?"

"Not if I have anything to say about it." Making herself known, she walked up to the twin 'bots and patted them on the shoulders. "I'll stay with you two. You guys can go ahead and fight those numb-nodes without us."

"Hold up. I'm stickin' with you cats too." Jazz stated out of nowhere. "I've known you two long enough to know that just one 'bot ain't gonna be enough to keep you cats in line."

"Aw, uncle Jazz. We is do not knowing what you are talking about."

"We are not being the cats." BlackArachnia giggled. Those two show-offs never missed the chance to jump on a convoluted joke. Though something in the back of her head told her that maybe Jetstorm was being serious about the cat thing. He never understood slang either.

"I'm staying too."

"Arcee?" No one really expected her to stay behind. She was the kind of femme that didn't mind getting dirty or broken. She once even lost a leg and didn't react much. No one really expected her to back down from a fight. Sure, she was sweet on the inside and quick to make friends, but out of all of them, Arcee was probably the best-rounded fighter. At least enough to survive in servo-to-servo combat.

"I've got my reasons. I've been meaning to talk to BlackArachnia for a while now."

"Alright then. But we don't have time. The Dinobots are going to wreck the whole city if we don't get there soon! Let's go!"

"WAIT!"

"What is it, Bumblebee?"

"Can you please say it? Please?" Optimus sighed. BlackArachnia knew he felt didn't have time for this. He took so many things way too seriously. She just hoped that wouldn't drive him up the wall one day. Optimus conformed and said 'the line', before they all transformed and sped out the garage-door. Once they were all on their way, their long-unused police sirens blaring for the first time in years, Arcee tapped on BlackArachnia's shoulder.

"I need to talk to you about something."

"I heard." Arcee gave her a bit of a leer. BlackArachnia just smiled. Optimus often described it as 'somewhat seductive.' "Jetfire, Jetstorm, why don't you play around for a bit. It's almost dawn anyway." It was. Only 5:32 in the morning and the sun still wasn't out yet. Before long it would start to get much colder, cold enough for her to alter her armor a bit to cover herself up some more. Well, as much as it could really. Being techno-organic sucked.

All her emo-moping aside, she just watched the twins start up a video game on that Y-box 720 thing, and invited Jazz to play. Arcee walked with her into the hallway, where they were pretty sure no one would hear them. BlackArachnia wasn't sure why Arcee was being so secretive about this. Maybe she thought she was going crazy?

"Back at Dino drive, when we first fought the Dinobots, I saw… something. Something floating around the Dinobots. Like AllSpark dust. Only, it was on a different visible spectrum. One I accidentally activated after being blown back by that triceratops."

"What about that dust?"

"When Bumblebee and Ratchet activated their Electro-magnetic pulse on them, the dust I saw merged into the blast and then merged with the Dinobots. I think that's why the Dinobots have gone stir-crazy."

BlackArachnia didn't know what to make of this information. She thought for a bit. Arcee had said she saw AllSpark dust around Bunny once a long time ago, but she herself had dismissed it as wishful thinking. The AllSpark container failed during its trip through that Space Bridge millions of years ago. It later caused the Space Bridge itself to malfunction, and after sitting for a while, at least 98% of Decepticons went in after it, destroying their bodies and life forces in the process.

All those bits and pieces of Cybertronian life were then scattered throughout the entire universe, even stretching as far as the corners of the universe, where stars were only on one side of whatever rock strayed that far. Surely the AllSpark shared a worse fate, first breaking the container into millions of chunks before turning the AllSpark itself into powder.

But then Bunny ended up reviving Jetfire and Jetstorm…

"Well, what do you think we should do about it?"

"I was hoping you would know." BlackArachnia thought for a second…

"Maybe we should keep this a secret for now. If you see any more AllSpark dust anywhere, you let me know and I'll put it all together."

"And how do you suppose you can 'put it together?"

"The AllSpark grants life to the inanimate, right? So far, the only other case we've seen first-hand of honest-to-goodness life coming from it was from Bunny's interaction with the twins."

"And the resulting ache in Jetfire's shoulders we had to fix."

"Well, yes, that. But as far as I can tell, Bunny is not a living object, just a projection of life. The Dinobots, however, appear to be either having a case of extreme glitching or have become living things. There's no solid evidence towards one or the other so far. So the next time you see it, then we can determine which instance is the 'fluke', so to speak."

"Sounds good. Now, don't you have twin boys to comfort?" At that, BlackArachnia turned over to the side of the door.

"Awww man! You is fragging my frigate!"

"You is to be watching your language, Brother! Mother will not be being pleased with your muddy mouth!"

"Ha ha ha! You two sure are funny!"

"Gagh! Sari! When is you getting to be here!"

"Being small _does_ have its advantages in a family of giant alien robots."

"Last time I checked you were supposed to be asleep."

"Last time _I _checked, today is Saturday."

"You got 'em there! Gimme some sugar!" A small high-five later and Jetstorm started yelling about how he made it to the end before Jazz. Then there was a light-hearted argument between Jetstorm 'cheating' by going ahead when the others were distracted. BlackArachnia only giggled. Her family was a bit dysfunctional and distant from each other in several senses, but there were still times like these, at 6 in the morning, when parts of the family just sat together and did something. It made her half-organic heart warm up the rest of her organic body enough that she didn't remember why she needed to modify her armor to cover herself up a bit more.

Sometimes being Techno-organic didn't suck.

* * *

**Well, here's my first Author's note. I don't like writing Author's notes. But just so you know, I didn't write the rest of the battle scene and episode because it's virtually the same as Blast from the past, so you can just watch that part there.**


	6. Snowflake

"Are they not beautiful, sister?"

"Uh… sure, Jetstorm…" Sari had no idea what it was Jetstorm saw in Snowflakes. They were too small for her to look at, and she even had lessons in looking at things with Bulkhead. If they were too small for her, then how could Jetstorm even _see_ them, let alone call them beautiful? Sari grumbled a bit to herself, but quietly. She didn't want Jetstorm to feel bad about liking something she didn't like.

She walked back inside her house. She thought about how heavy her backpack was. School was out now, closed up for four weeks. That was good. That meant it was about the time when she'd go to The Human Place. She still didn't understand how it happened. All she knew was that she'd be put in a pod thing and the next morning she'd wake up with a family that was human. She liked that place, though her memories _did_ somehow change around a bit.

But her backpack was still really heavy.

Geez, Bunny, what have you been _eating!_ **"It's not me! You just always insist on bringing the heaviest books to school!"** Hey! I need a good edumacation! **"That's not even a word."** Shut up, Bunny.

She walked inside, looking high at the garage door, almost completely open. That was good. She didn't see Jetfire out there. She didn't want to go through… _that_ again. She shivered a bit. That dumb circus tent _still_ gave her bad dreams.

She shook her head hard and scratched the edges of her pigtails under her hat. This wasn't a good time to think about that stuff! It was Christmas! Well, almost. But she couldn't _wait_ until it was Christmas. Then they'd have a tree and a big fancy mansion instead of an old warehouse, and she'd be able to hug her family without having to be careful of them squishing her like a bug.

She tore off her scarf and jacket. She didn't need it on when she was inside. Even if the door was wide open. Jetfire could keep her warm, anyways. Speaking of which, where did he go? **"I don't know."** Well, then thanks for nothing, Bunny! **"Hey,**_**you**_**were the one that asked the question!"** It was a rhemortacal question, _Bunny._ **"I think you mean,**_**rhetorical?**_**"** Shut up, Bunny. **"You say that a lot. You know that?"**

Sari didn't reply. Mostly because she would have just said it again. She didn't want to give Bunny the chance to gloat. Now where was she going to put her coat? Mom didn't like it when she just dropped it on the floor. Maybe she should just tie it around her waist like she saw the older kids at school do when it got warmer in the afternoon.

She walked over to the mega-couch in the 'living room' and climbed up. She'd been doing this her whole life, so it was really easy by now. Though she did get hungry a lot. Some of the older people said she was skinny. She didn't think she was _that_ skinny. It wasn't her fault she couldn't eat Energon.

Of course, Jetfire was sitting there, uninterested in what was on the TV. He just kept clicking on the 'up' button on the remote over and over and over again. Sari couldn't tell if he was trying to find a certain channel or if he was just bored and clicking the button for no reason. It wasn't like she could see his face from so far away (he was like, bigger than a two-story house). Apparently he had gotten bored of clicking the button, so he just finally stopped and dropped the remote, tilting his head up and staring at the ceiling.

"MOTHER! There is nothing good to watch on the VT!"

"I'm sort of _busy_ right now, Jetfire! Could you maybe talk about this with someone else?" Sari looked to her left, and found her mother pulling on something. It looked like some sort of rope thing. She decided to ask.

"What'cha doing, mom?"

"Oh, hi Sari!" she grunted a bit, pulling on the rope, "Did you walk home this time?"

"Yeah. What's with the rope?"

"Oh, Bumblebee stuck something" She pulled on the rope again, getting a bit farther away from the wall, "into the elevator system yesterday and we sort of need it to get the" She pulled yet again, now a bit out of breath, "virtual reality system operational." At that, Sari paused a bit. She refused to listen to Bunny, trying to figure things out for herself for once. She didn't want her family to think she was a genius. All those things that she knew, she learned from Bunny. He was weird like that.

"What's a 'Virchamal reality system'?" Her mom stopped pulling on the rope. She paused for a bit, and Sari waited. She didn't hear the answer come from her mom, but instead Jetfire.

"It's the thing that is turning the Jell-O green!" He said dramatically, pointing to the ceiling and dropping his arm back down. So _that's_ what made Jell-O green! How did it work?

"How does it work?"

"It is taking all of the green things of the planet Earth and is stealing the green colors from the green things, then is giving it to the Jell-O."

"What color is the Jell-O before it turns green?"

"Chartreuse!"

"That's not even a color!"

"It is so being a color!"

"Is not!"

"I will be proving to you!" He picked up the remote from where it landed, and started flicking the channels quickly. She could barely see what the channels were displaying, though she did catch glimpses of lamps on top a ball, trains, a Polar Bear, A penguin putting a sign up on the Equator, and the International J-Pop star Miku Hatsune singing on stage with some blue guy. Then he finally got onto the surprisingly educational 'color channel', where there was in fact a special on 'chartreuse', and it was, in fact, a color. It looked like some kind of greenish yellow.

"Ooh! Ya got me!"

"I win!"

"Win what?"

"Uh… A hug?" Sari giggled a bit, and stood up. The couch was really BIG, so she couldn't just lean over to one side and hug him. She'd fall over. Once she made it over to Jetfire, she climbed on his legs. It was sort of hard, since he kept jerking a bit, saying that she tickled. But she kept her grip anyway and climbed onto his leg. Now all she had to do was get to his chest.

"Here, letting me to help." She nearly tripped on Jetfire's hand, but she was grateful for the help. She flopped herself onto his fingers, and he curled them over so that she was on her back on his palm. She stayed still, since she knew how scary it got hen he pulled her up in any way. She'd been flying with him before, and he had a tendency of shooting straight up like a rocket ship. Though technically that's what he _was_.

There was a sudden stop, and she flew up a little ways, before landing back on his palm. She sat straight up, not feeling much of a thing. She had strong skin. She was right up to his face now. Not exactly where she _wanted_ to hug him, but it was fine. She ran up to the left side of his face and spread her arms around it best she could, underneath that pointy thing he had draped over his face (she still didn't know what that was for). She looked at his eye, and he blinked a bit. She just smiled wide at him.

She was done now so she walked back onto his hand and signed for him to send her back down. And he did, but fast. For a second she lifted up onto the air for a second, as though gravity didn't exist. She'd felt like this before. Though it was usually with Bulkhead, who was pretty clumsy on a regular basis.

But this was Jetfire. He didn't really know how to handle her inside his hand yet, at least not on his own. He usually cupped her in his hand with Jetstorm. So naturally, his hand shifted a bit to the left.

Oops.

She fell. Yeah, it was scary. _Real_ scary! She almost wished she was bird, or a plane, or Superman, or better yet, a bowling ball. At least then she wouldn't be able to know what it felt like to hit the ground really hard, since she'd be an object and not a person. Maybe if she hit the ground hard enough she'd tear a hole and go through to the Basement.

But then her fall was over, and she was in pitch black. She saw some light shift through fingers above her, but only enough for her to tell where she was. She was inside Bumblebee's hands. Uh oh.

She was jerked straight upwards, and was pried towards the floor. It stopped for a while, and she heard Bumblebee yammer on and on about how 'You're the older brother here! You should be more in charge with your younger sister!' or something along those lines.

He jerked her forward a bit more, shook her up and down, and turned her over to some other side and held close to his spark. Then, he finally jerked her back over towards somewhere, though Sari couldn't tell where anymore. She was shaken up very badly inside his hands, and it was increasingly difficult to tell where she was when she couldn't see past Bumblebee's hands.

Maybe if she had Super vision she'd be able to see where she was. But she did not have Super vision, so she could not see, and that left her very unhappy. She really very much preferred it when she knew where she was and why she was there. Because then Bunny would be able to tell her about things, and she would seem smart.

Then she heard Jetfire say something, and this time was gently lowered down somewhere. After a while, Bumblebee opened his hands, and dropped her some short ways until she hit the big, soft couch. That was good. Now she didn't have to worry about throwing up inside Bumblebee's arms.

"Sorry… Sari." Bumblebee said slowly. Though Sari thought it was more from him not knowing how to say sorry to her when her name sounded so much like the word 'sorry'. She thought she would be a bit careful as well, since she didn't know how to say sorry to herself either. But really, she didn't feel sorry.

"Do it again! Do it again!"

"NO again." Sari turned over to her mom, towering over them. She was frowning, and exhaled. "Look, maybe you should do something different for a while. Bumblebee, how about you help me get that bicycle out of the elevator systems."

"I _told you,_ it was an _accident!_"

"Uh-huh, last time I checked we didn't _have_ a bicycle anywhere _near_ our house. Spark knows what you were up to that got one _stuck in the elevator systems_." Bumblebee grumbled to himself something Sari couldn't make out, and stomped over to the rope. Sari giggled. Bumblebee never wanted to work.

"What about me? What should I be doing, mother?" Mom stopped for a second, thinking.

"What is Jetstorm doing?"

"Thinking."

"That's it?"

"Yes. He is thinking."

"About what?"

"He is thinking about what he should be getting Sari for Christmas."

"But Christmas isn't for another week." Sari piped in. Why would he be worrying so much? Isn't the Human Place where he's supposed to get her presents?

"He is wanting to be giving you something before we is going to the Human Place." Sari shivered at what he said. It was creepy how people could somehow read her mind. Maybe it was because she spent so much time talking to Bunny. **"HEY! Don't blame me!"** I wasn't talking to you, Bunny! **"Not**_**directly…"**_

"Oh, I get it." Mom said again. "Well, then… why don't you try vacuuming something?"

"Like what?"

"I know! I know! Vacuum the ceiling! _No one_vacuumed the ceiling before! It must be filthy!" Sari suggested. Jetfire then looked up at the ceiling, and Sari did too. She was startled at how much filth was on the ceiling to begin with, just like she said. To be honest, she had never looked up to the ceiling before, so she was surprised to find it so dirty. At least she knew _one_ thing without Bunny's help.

"Alright then! I will be vacuuming the ceiling now!" Jetfire said.

"But wait, where will you find a vacuum big enough to hold in your hand?" Bumblebee said. Jetfire stopped for a second, staring towards his left, before snapping his fingers as though a light bulb had lit above his head.

"I will be letting Sari to be vacuuming it, and I will be holding her up."

And with that, Sari was left to find the old vacuum in the broom closet she never opened before. The vacuum was too small, and the warehouse was too big, so this was the first time Sari had used it. She couldn't help but wonder what it was like to vacuum something! And she was going to vacuum the ceiling. How many other girls could say that they spent the day vacuuming the ceiling? She was sure she would be the first! Maybe she'd be put in World Record books!

The vacuum was much heavier than she had thought. It took her a minute or two to lug it into the living room. Once she was inside, she took the signal thingy that made the Vacuum know it had energy to start. There was a button to turn it on, so it wouldn't randomly start after plugging it in. Sari thought that was good, since she didn't want to get eaten by a vacuum anytime soon.

She held on tight to the handle, and let Jetfire lift her up. Once she was up, she lifted the vacuum upwards. She was stronger than most girls, even though she was considered skinny by the grown-ups she met. She wondered how she was so strong sometimes. Maybe it was because she was raised by super-strong alien robots?

She didn't really do very much, just held the vacuum in place and pushed it against the ceiling. Jetfire was the one that moved it back and forth and forwards and left (he didn't go right very often). Soon enough, everything was done. There were times when Grandma came in to ask what was going on, and decided to help get the bike out of the whatever-it-was-called. By the time they were done, the entire family had helped to get it out.

Sari was lowered to the ground, and she left the vacuum against the wall. The rest of her family was excited and happy, and congratulating themselves on a job well done. Grandpa started yelling at Bumblebee for being reckless, and Dad and Mom were trying to calm everyone down a bit. Uncle Jazz was just standing there, watching the rest of the family. Sari wasn't paying attention to them, though. She wasn't even looking at them.

She just looked through the open door, at Jetstorm.

Sari didn't remember walking up to him. She just suddenly found herself on a mound, her jacket on, her hat in her ungloved hand, looking up at him. He was sitting down, his hand out, catching a large mound of snow in his hand. He didn't notice her. If he did, she couldn't tell. He was just looking at the snow in his hand. Thanking.

Sari looked up at the sky. It was white, and she could see some snow falling. She followed one little flake from the sky, down. Down. Down.

Down.

Until it finally landed in her cold hand. Even though it was cold, and her hand felt even colder with the flake on it, it still melted before she could get a good look at it. She frowned. Why were these things so pretty to Jetstorm? All she could see were little flakey things that melted in her hand. How could something so simple be so pretty?

"How is you making a snowflake?" Sari shot her head up, and looked straight at Jetstorm. That visor of his showed nothing. She couldn't tell if he was angry, sad, or happy.

"I don't know." Sari said. Jetstorm looked back at the mound of snow in his hand. She looked at it too. It started sparkling a bit, and she tried to find what was so 'beautiful' about snow. It was white, and it was in big clumps. It sparkled if it was wet, which it always was because it was made of water. It was made of small, frozen drops of water that fall to the ground like rain, only much slower. Sari noticed that it was hard to find a way to describe snow in a way that made it sound beautiful.

And yet it was.

Jetstorm started moving a bit, and lifted the mound up with some wind from around. She knew it was from around, because there was a small breeze earlier that blew some of her long hair into her face (she should have worn her hair clips). But now everything else was calm and still. Quiet.

It seemed like the snow was just floating in between Jetstorm's hands. After Sari saw what happened next, Grandpa would probably think it must have happened because it was in a time and place where it couldn't really do anything else. It had nowhere to go, nothing to do, and no way down. But Sari knew better. She knew how it _really_ happened. Magic.

In Jetstorm's hand was now a giant Snowflake. It was a few circles outside and inside of each other, with stick-things going through it. It was a very intricate design, with pointy things outside of it, and a strange pattern of holes in between all of the ice. It glowed and shined like glitter, and was completely flat…

Almost…

Like Jetstorm had just stolen a star from the sky.

"Merry Christmas, Sister."


End file.
